The Capitol Square is probably one of the most touristic corners of Rome. In this elegant place, designed by Michelangelo on behalf of Pope Paul III who wanted to impress Emperor Charles V during his visit in 1538, are the Capitoline Museums whose headquarters, the Conservatori palaces y New , determine the spaces and house some of the most attractive pieces of art for the visitor, from the Discobolus to the Capitoline Venus , passing through the Dying Galata or, above all, the Capitoline Wolf and the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius (although they are copies because the originals were moved for conservation reasons). But there is one more reason to climb that little hill, one of the original seven in Rome:the sinister Tarpeian Rock.
The Capitolinus Mons it does not exceed fifty meters high, so only the Aventine has a lower level. However, its southern face, facing the Forum and known as Rupes Tarpeia or Saxum Tarpeium , was almost cut to a peak and had a sufficient slope so that the point where the executions of inmates whose crimes were of extreme gravity, perjury, murder or treason, were carried out during the republican period:they were thrown into a fatal fall of twenty-five meters in the so-called praecipitatio .
The Roca Tarpeya presents today a different aspect than then, since the aforementioned Renaissance reform involved the incorporation of some architectural structures such as the Cordonata (an access ramp that allowed horse riding). Already in the Middle Ages the physiognomy of the mountain had changed considerably as it lost the sacred character it had in pagan times; in fact, the Senate was even located there in the twelfth century and two hundred years later the site served as a defensive citadel during the period of the Republic of Cola di Rienzo.
The truth is that, in 1905, the Italian historian and epigrapher Ettore Pais, who was director of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples and led an excavation campaign in Pompeii, proposed the theory that the Tarpeian Rock was not located on that southern slope of the Capitolium but on the other top of the mountain, the so-called Arx. Today it is occupied by the basilica of Santa María de Aracoeli but the archaeological works proved him right, with which the site no longer has the physical characteristics of Antiquity as it has been levelled.
However, by narrowing your eyes, you can exercise your imagination and visualize one of the illustrious condemned men who had the dishonor of being thrown from the top by the quaestores parricidii , that is to say the quaestors or judges who, at first, dealt only with accusations of perduellio (treason) or armed insurrection, and who later extended their functions to other types of charges and crimes, such as economic or criminal ones. Later the tribunes of the plebs would succeed them.
Among the most important characters who died on the Tarpeian Rock we could mention Espurio Casio Vecelino (ex-consul accused of wanting to proclaim himself king), Marco Manlio Capitolino (a patrician hero, also ex-consul, who paradoxically led a plebeian revolt), Lucius Cornelius Chrysogonus (a Greek freedman who had belonged to Sulla and was accused of corruption by Cicero), Simon bar Giora (Idumean leader of the Jewish rebellion that ended up putting down Vespasian and Titus), etc.
We said dishonor because that form of capital punishment implied a stigma of shame for the one who suffered it, something that in the context of Ancient Rome could be even worse than death. Normal executions used to be by strangulation in the Tullianum , a prison located very close to the Tarpeian Rock, in the northwest part of the Capitol, which in the Middle Ages was renamed the Mamertine Prison. Actually, the Tullianum it was a temporary confinement (public custody ) because the Romans did not condemn imprisonment.
For this reason, when the accused were of high birth, it was not in accordance with their position to be enslaved or sent to forced labor, hence they were given the option of committing suicide, a custom inherited from Greece and considered more honorable. Not a few illustrious Romans took their lives like this, some with their pugio (Calpurnius Piso, Nero), others with poison or opening their veins (Seneca)... Now, if the crime was among those mentioned above, they could end up thrown off the cliff; “Arx tarpeia Capitoli proxima” said an aphorism that can be translated as La Roca Tarpeya is near the Capitol and that alludes to the idea that the higher you climb, the higher you can fall.
When and how did this disastrous tradition begin? As with so many things in the history of Rome, mythology and reality merge in a confusing way. We must go back to the famous abduction of the Sabine women, an episode from the 8th century BC. according to which the early Romans, being short of women, had the idea of organizing some games in honor of Neptune to solve it and several neighboring towns were invited. Of all those who attended, the Sabines, inhabitants of Sabinia (a region in northwestern Lazio), came with their wives and children.
The event turned out to be a trap set by Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome, at whose signal each Roman kidnapped a Sabine woman and then expelled the men from the city. Given the fait accompli, they could only agree to marry their kidnappers, although they made it a condition not to perform any more domestic work than weaving. For the rest, they married those who already considered themselves a chosen people; Of course, as expected, the Sabines were not very happy and years later they organized a devastating attack against Rome, whose inhabitants had to barricade themselves in the Capitol.
Tarpeia, a vestal daughter of the governor of the Capitoline citadel, Espurio Tarpeio (Roman women had no prenomen and used only the nomen , numbering herself if there was more than one in the family), she betrayed her family by opening the door to the enemy in exchange for what they carried on their arms, alluding to the bracelets and rings that the Sabines used to wear. They accepted and had free passage but kept their word in a sui generis manner. :instead of paying her with jewels they crushed her with their shields, which after all they also carried in their arms and then threw her over the precipice «so that the citadel would appear to have been taken by storm or so that their example remain as a warning that no trust should be kept with traitors" , tells Tito Livio in his work Ab urbe condita .
Calpurnius Piso left another version, according to which Tarpeia was not infamous but quite the opposite, since she would have tried to trick the Sabines into entering the citadel and there demanding what they carried in their arms, that is, their shields, of so that they were defenseless and the Romans could dispatch them. And there is yet another, written by Propertius, which puts the cause of everything in an infatuation with the vestal of the Sabine king, Titus Tatius, to whom he would demand that he take her as his wife. Whatever the reason, if the episode is not pure myth, the end for her is always the same.
The Sabine women ended up interposing themselves between the contending armies, urging them not to fight because, continues Livio, «we are the cause of the war, we are the ones who have wounded and killed our husbands and fathers. It would be better for us to die than to live without one or the other, as widows or orphans» . Thus it was that Titus Tatius, king of Sabinia, and Romulus, the Roman ruler, formed a diarchy. And the place where Tarpeya paid for her action with her life was destined for a natural gallows.
Three centuries later, around 500 B.C. Approximately, the monarch Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, alias the Proud, reigned, under whose rule Rome experienced a military expansion (he introduced the custom of celebrating triumphs) that allowed it to be embellished architecturally. Tarquinius built the Cloaca Maxima and the Circus Maximus, had the usual huts replaced by brick dwellings, and was the one who ordered the demolition of the altar built by the Sabines in the Intermontium (the col between the two tops of the hill) to build a temple dedicated to Jupiter in its place, to which another one would later be added in honor of Saturn to house the treasure of Rome.
How many people died executed in the Tarpeian Rock? It is impossible to know but much more than one could imagine a priori , since the concept of the crime of treason was much broader in Rome than it is now. Not only was anyone who dealt with the enemy, such as Tarpeia, considered a traitor, but also anyone who deserted the army, was a too radical political opponent, tampered with the inviolability of a magistrate, or even someone who stole or lied (if he was a commoner), such as indicated by the Law of the Twelve Tables.
Few of the probably thousands who were sentenced to the praecipitatio they managed to survive. However, some managed it, either by escaping in time, like Gaius Marcius Coriolanus (convicted for disobeying the tribunes), or because the fall was not fatal (the historian Rufo Festo cites in his Breviarium rerum gestarum populi Romani to a certain Lucius Terentius, who was finally pardoned), thus getting rid not only of death but also of the subsequent macabre ceremony that consisted of exhibiting the shattered corpse on some stairs that were under the Arx called Gemoniae .